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Krontjong Toegoe in Tugu
Village: Generic Form of Indonesian Keroncong Music
By Vitor Ganap
Abstract
Keroncong music today has been considered as one of the
Indonesian musical mainstreams, but the historical
background of how the music emerged remains a mystery.
The only keroncong known from the past is Krontjong
Toegoe, developed in Tugu village since the seventeenth
century as a hybrid genre of Portuguese sojourn. This
article aims to discuss the musical style of Krontjong
Toegoe and the origin of its supporting community in
Tugu village north of Jakarta. While Krontjong Toegoe is
still alive up to now, its historical relationships to
the sixteenth century Portuguese music and to the
Indonesian keroncong music today are of important and
interesting discourse.
Introduction
So far there were very few articles on keroncong music
that have been written by musicologists, and this
article opens the discussion by quoting their opinions,
which are of important points in reviewing the position
and legitimacy of keroncong music. In the following
discourse, Australian musicologist Bronia Kornhauser was
among few scholars who have visited and conducted field
research in Tugu village (kampung) in 1973. Her essay
entitled In Defence of Kroncong has been an important
source and widely quoted in today
keroncong publications. After her visit to the village,
she admitted that Krontjong Toegoe played by the Tugu
musicians which lasted for more than three centuries
have been an important evidence to the investigation on
Portuguese musical legacy in Indonesia.
Tugu holds a unique place in the history of kroncong. It
is living proof of the Portugis-Indonesian heritage of
this music. By all accounts, Tugu is also the place
where kroncong originated in Java. To the best of our
knowledge, it has been played in this kampung for the
past 315 years and in the major cities of the island for
at least a century. (Kornhauser 1978:176)
In conformity with Bronia, American musicologist Judith
Becker also confirmed in her 1976 Asian Music article
that the Indonesian keroncong music came from Portugal.
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